In the centuries of Inca domination there was little opportunity for individual effort.  Private property was not understood.  Everything belonged to the government.  The crops were taken by the priests, the Incas and the nobles.  The people were not as unhappy as we should be.  One seldom had to labor alone.  Everything was done in common.  When it was time to cultivate the fields or to harvest the crops, the laborers were ordered by the Incas to go forth in huge family parties.  They lessened the hardships of farm labor by village gossip and choral singing, interspersed at regular intervals with rest periods, in which quantities of chicha quenched the thirst and cheered the mind.

Habits of community work are still shown in the Andes.  One often sees a score or more of Indians carrying huge bundles of sheaves of wheat or barley.  I have found a dozen yoke of oxen, each a few yards from the other in a parallel line, engaged in ploughing synchronously small portions of a large field.  Although the landlords frequently visit Lima and sometimes go to Paris and New York, where they purchase for their own use the products of modern invention, the fields are still cultivated in the fashion introduced three centuries ago by the conquistadores, who brought the first draft animals and the primitive pointed plough of the ancient Mediterranean.

Crops at La Raya are not confined to potatoes.  Another food plant, almost unknown to Europeans, even those who live in Lima, is canihua, a kind of pigweed.  It was being harvested at the time of our visit in April.  The threshing floor for canihua is a large blanket laid on the ground.  On top of this the stalks are placed and the flail applied, the blanket serving to prevent the small grayish seeds from escaping.  The entire process uses nothing of European origin and has probably not changed for centuries.

We noticed also quinoa and even barley growing at an elevation of 14,000 feet.  Quinoa is another species of pigweed.  It often attains a height of three to four feet.  There are several varieties.  The white-seeded variety, after being boiled, may be fairly compared with oatmeal.  Mr. Cook actually preferred it to the Scotch article, both for taste and texture.  The seeds retain their form after being cooked and “do not appear so slimy as oatmeal.”  Other varieties of quinoa are bitter and have to be boiled several times, the water being frequently changed.  The growing quinoa presents an attractive appearance; its leaves assume many colors.

As we went down the valley the evidences of extensive cultivation, both ancient and modern, steadily increased.  Great numbers of old terraces were to be seen.  There were many fields of wheat, some of them growing high up on the mountain side in what are called temporales, where, owing to the steep slope, there is little effort at tillage or cultivation, the planter trusting to luck to get some kind of a crop in reward for very little effort.  On April 14th, just above Sicuani, we saw fields where habas beans had been gathered and the dried stalks piled in little stacks.  At Occobamba, or the pampa where oca grows, we found fields of that useful tuber, just now ripening.  Near by were little thatched shelters, erected for the temporary use of night watchmen during the harvest season.